The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

since that time, whenever creditors were more than ordinarily importunate, when Slow and Bideawhile could do nothing for him, he would refer to that fatal measure as though it was the cause of every embarrassment which had harassed him. How could she tell parents such as these that she was engaged to marry a man who at the present moment went to synagogue on a Saturday and carried out every other filthy abomination common to the despised people?

That Mr. Brehgert was a fat, greasy man of fifty, conspicuous for hair-dye, was in itself distressing:⁠—but this minor distress was swallowed up in the greater. Miss Longestaffe was a girl possessing considerable discrimination, and was able to weigh her own possessions in just scales. She had begun life with very high aspirations, believing in her own beauty, in her mother’s fashion, and her father’s fortune. She had now been ten years at the work, and was aware that she had always flown a little too high for her mark at the time. At nineteen and twenty and twenty-one she had thought that all the world was before her. With her commanding figure, regular long features, and bright complexion, she had regarded herself as one of the beauties of the day, and had considered herself entitled to demand wealth and a coronet. At twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four any young peer, or peer’s eldest son, with a house in town and in the country, might have sufficed. Twenty-five and six had been the years for baronets and squires; and even a leading fashionable lawyer or two had been marked by her as sufficient since that time. But now she was aware that hitherto she had always fixed her price a little too high. On three things she was still determined⁠—that she would not be poor, that she would not be banished from London, and that she would not be an old maid. “Mamma,” she had often said, “there’s one thing certain. I shall never do to be poor.” Lady Pomona had expressed full concurrence with her child. “And, mamma, to do as Sophia is doing would kill me. Fancy having to live at Toodlam all one’s life with George Whitstable!” Lady Pomona had agreed to this also, though she thought that Toodlam Hall was a very nice home for her elder daughter. “And, mamma, I should drive you and papa mad if I were to stay at home always. And what would become of me when Dolly was master of everything?” Lady Pomona, looking forward as well as she was able to the time at which she should herself have departed, when her dower and dower-house would have reverted to Dolly, acknowledged that Georgiana should provide herself with a home of her own before that time.

And how was this to be done? Lovers with all the glories and all the graces are supposed to be plentiful as blackberries by girls of nineteen, but have been proved to be rare hothouse fruits by girls of twenty-nine. Brehgert was rich, would live in London, and would be a husband. People did such odd things now and “lived them down,” that she could see no reason why she should not do this and live this down. Courage was the one thing necessary⁠—that and perseverance. She must teach herself to talk about Brehgert as Lady Monogram did of Sir Damask. She had plucked up so much courage as had enabled her to declare her fate to her old friend⁠—remembering as she did so how in days long past she and her friend Julia Triplex had scattered their scorn upon some poor girl who had married a man with a Jewish name⁠—whose grandfather had possibly been a Jew. “Dear me,” said Lady Monogram. “Todd, Brehgert, and Goldsheiner! Mr. Todd is⁠—one of us, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Georgiana boldly, “and Mr. Brehgert is a Jew. His name is Ezekiel Brehgert, and he is a Jew. You can say what you like about it.”

“I don’t say anything about it, my dear.”

“And you can think anything you like. Things are changed since you and I were younger.”

“Very much changed, it appears,” said Lady Monogram. Sir Damask’s religion had never been doubted, though except on the occasion of his marriage no acquaintance of his had probably ever seen him in church.

But to tell her father and mother required a higher spirit than she had shown even in her communication to Lady Monogram, and that spirit had not as yet come to her. On the morning before she left the Melmottes in Bruton Street, her lover had been with her. The Melmottes of course knew of the engagement and quite approved of it. Madame Melmotte rather aspired to credit for having had so happy an affair arranged under her auspices. It was some set-off against Marie’s unfortunate escapade. Mr. Brehgert, therefore, had been allowed to come and go as he pleased, and on that morning he had pleased to come. They were sitting alone in some back room, and Brehgert was pressing for an early day. “I don’t think we need talk of that yet, Mr. Brehgert,” she said.

“You might as well get over the difficulty and call me Ezekiel at once,” he remarked. Georgiana frowned, and made no soft little attempt at the name as ladies in such circumstances are wont to do. “Mrs. Brehgert”⁠—he alluded of course to the mother of his children⁠—“used to call me Ezzy.”

“Perhaps I shall do so some day,” said Miss Longestaffe, looking at her lover, and asking herself why she should not have been able to have the house and the money and the name of the wife without the troubles appertaining. She did not think it possible that she should ever call him Ezzy.

“And ven shall it be? I should say as early in August as possible.”

“In August!” she almost screamed. It was already July.

“Vy not, my dear? Ve would have our little holiday in Germany⁠—at Vienna. I have business there, and know many friends.” Then he pressed her hard to fix some